Learning to work with Willow.

I always tell my students it is getting used to a different material.

And even though it's very flexible, it's very strong.

It takes a little bit of manipulation.

Like a Willow workout plan makes your hand stronger if you're doing a lot of willow weaving.

I'm Joe Campbell AMSLER.

I'm a willow basket maker.

We are going to be making a little willow Christmas choose today.

And even though they are baskets, they're using some basic basketry techniques that I use all the time under the basket tree.

I use material Willow, which I have here on the table.

If you ever want to do this yourself, you can gather wild Willow from the state of Iowa.

Grows along the river banks in a wet areas.

What you'd be looking for are just long, slender shoots without any side branching, which is what we like to use in our basketry.

And they'll work the best for this Christmas tree project also.

So the first thing is start your own piece.

That's about a five foot length willow grows proportionately.

So the longer it is taller, it is, the thicker it is.

So for the frame of the tree, we need something that's a little heavier grade than what we're going to be using for the weavers of it.

So I start with the bottom, the butt end of the willow it's called, and I make a slight kink, so I have about an inch.

Inch and a half length that's going to come up the side of my basket.

And then I'm going to make another kink that determines the width at the base of my tree.

And then I'm going to bring the stick up to determine the height where the point of the tree would be and I would bend it again.

So you can see now I have the outline of a Christmas tree.

I'll trim off my extra length just at the bottom where the tree will be, and I'm going to take a piece of masking tape to hold that temporarily in place.

I'll bring it back to shape and put a piece of tape.

You can see this is not only using your hands, but your body when you're working with Willow.

It's very flexible, but it's a very strong material.

And now I'm ready to start weaving.

So now I will take some of the finer weavers.

And these are 2 to 3 foot in length.

And you see, they're much slimmer than the willow that I used for my frame.

You always want your weavers to be more slender because then they will not distort your frame.

So I start with the tip of the willow, and I insert it just inside the point.

I leave a little the extra length that will get captured under my weave.

And now we're actually going to start a weave back and forth across the point.

This is called a figure eight.

We have come under and then I turn around and I go over and then under.

So I'm basically weaving from side to side of that point, always doing an opposite stroke of what I did before.

And as we move down the point, my spacing here gets greater and it opens up a space where I insert the rest of the tree or what will become the trunk, and that's what it turns, we would call it in the ribs of the basket.

So you can see as I'm weaving down the point, what's called the figure eight in the center is getting more and more open.

And that's where I'm going to insert those ribs or what will become the trunk of the Christmas tree.

So I'm weaving down about from the point down a good two inches to two and a half.

I'm going to look for a heavier grade Willow, and I'll trim off some of the the skinny end.

And I won't be using all of the by the end of it.

And I cut it to a point so it slides up into the space much easier.

So if you look at the weave, you can see this figure eight design.

One end of this willow goes in one part of the figure eight and I pull it straight through the center, decide how long I want my trunk to be past the frame it and bend it again to come back up.

So now you have the trunk of your tree formed, and then you determine how far it's going to go up into your weaving, which it doesn't need to go very far.

A half inch or so you can see.

I got it pushed up a little farther.

My trunk circuits are simply just pull it back down, even it out.

And there I have the frame of my tree all set and ready to go.

At this point, I like to use hip hop clamps or anything.

Clamp a clothespin would probably work or string if you didn't have any those to hold that trunk in place.

Otherwise it wants to move around.

Now I'm ready to add more weavers and finish weaving the tree.

So at this point, this end has gotten pretty heavy.

And I want to start a new piece.

I simply trim it off.

I like to trim it to an angle so it rests on any of these four points on the back to hold it securely.

I simply pick up a new weaver and I lay it right beside it.

So in the Willow world, we start with the tip of the weaver and we end with the bud.

So my next one I'm going to add in.

I'm going to start with the back so that my thickness maintains an equal thickness.

As I'm weaving along now, it's just simply a matter of weaving back and forth until you get to the bottom of your tree.

As you can see, I'm just going to continue weaving down to the bottom.

I've woven down to the point where I'm going to start covering up the masking tape, but I have caught one end of that overlap under my weaver.

So secure.

At this point, I take the tape off.

Once you weave over the tape, you can't get it out.

So it's important to remove it at this time.

So I just take the scissors and cut it and pull it off.

When I get to the base of the tree, I'm going to fill in the last row.

And then I simply skip a beat and I cross over and I start weaving on the base of the tree, on the trunk.

When we get down to here, we're now only weaving across two points or back to that figure eight weaving again.

And there you have a tree.